SCRAPS

If you’ve always wanted to play Lemmings, but have found the idea of sending countless living creatures to their deaths slightly disturbing, maybe the soulless machine minions of SCRAPS are more up your alley. SCRAPS, or ‘Specialty Construct: Robotic Articulated Property Salvage’, innovates in the puzzle-platformer genre with some genuinely new gameplay ideas, which almost makes up for its repetitive graphics and sound.

The goal in SCRAPS is to use your robot underlings, also called scraps, to gather all the energy cells in an area, not to lead them to a specific destination unharmed like in Lemmings. Because of this, the scraps end up being more expendable than Lemmings fans are used to. There are a finite number of robots per level; the remaining number of robots is shown on the machine they spawn from, so they still must be treated with care. Just know that in some levels like ‘A Few Dead Scraps’, not all of your automatons may live to see victory.

Often though, scraps will be sacrificed for the greater good. What sets these peons apart is that they’re able to affect the environment in clever ways both hazardous and beneficial, instead of the player manipulating the play field for them. Scraps are created automatically, and once created they move automatically as well. Players wanting more of a challenge can speed up scraps at will.

Tapping on one pauses the game brings up three commands: bomb, platform, and switch. Bomb causes a scrap to explode, destroying certain platforms and creating gaps to fall through. Platform causes a scrap to fill in a gap by turning into a platform which can then be destroyed by another bomb scrap if necessary. Finally, switch causes a scrap to press the button closest to it, activating various color-coded moving and/or holographic platforms.

Some scraps are downright disposable.

The inventive mechanics allow for some very fresh, satisfying level designs. Being able to multitask is essential because not only will you be managing different robots, but also managing one robot who needs to do perform several different functions, sometimes offscreen. Too many times you’ll need to follow a harshly linear sequence in order to succeed, so prepare for some trial and error. Luckily, if you do get stuck, you can always skip a level or watch a video walkthrough.

Where SCRAPS doesn’t feel so fresh is in its presentation. All levels take place in the same gray warehouse, have the same mechanical soundtrack, and use identical scraps (new ones are coming according to the developers). Also, the graphics don’t always illustrate how the puzzle elements work very well. The graphics aren’t bad, but seeing the same cute cartoon robot in the same environment, even if he is solving an awesome puzzle, will only get you so far.

SCRAPS features four worlds with ten levels and the promise of more. Using their Juju Play community, developer Amplified Games has also created an easy way for players to share their custom stages. The included level editor, like all great level editors, offers enough freedom and flexibility for some truly great levels to emerge. Each stage lasts from several seconds to several minutes, so there is a lot of content to potentially experience for your $2.99 purchase.

Scraps is an interesting twist on the Lemmings formula. If you can get past the repetitive visuals and sounds, you’ll find lots of smart, tough, and most importantly, enjoyable puzzles to take on.

In a case of what has to be the developers deciding on an acronym before thinking up the words it stands for, SCRAPS means “Specialty Construct: Robotic Articulated Property Salvage.” (We tried to say that five times fast, but we bit our tongues).

The game could just as easily be called “Lemmings with Robots,” although to avoid lawsuits it’s probably best that they named it what they did.

Scraps are disposable robots whose sole purpose is to gobble up energy pods, and as the player, it’s your job to direct them toward that goal.

As with any borrowed-concept game worth its salt, developer Amplified Games uses the basic gameplay of its source material as a springboard rather than a blueprint. Unlike Lemmings, you’re not trying to direct your characters from point A to point B while keeping as many alive as possible. In fact, in SCRAPS you can and will destroy plenty of robots as you work them toward the energy pods in any given level. Also unlike Lemmings, many levels have several entry portals that spawn scraps, so you’ll usually be juggling different scraps on opposite sides of the screen.

Instead of having a large menu of actions to help your scraps reach the energy pods, the developers have whittled the options down to three: detonate, create a platform, and activate a switch. Tapping a scrap pulls up the menu, and tapping an action makes that scrap comply as soon it can. Detonating a scrap sacrifices it to destroy a platform, which allows other scraps to fall to platforms below. Creating a platform makes a scrap transform into a piece of metal to cover up a pit. And activating a switch either causes a mobile platform in the level to move, or changes the direction of a conveyor belt.

The conveyor belts and moving platforms add a good deal of challenge to the stages, because you’ll often have to activate switches in a certain order to transport a scrap to an out-of-the-way energy pod. Determining which scrap to send and in what order to activate the switches leads to some head-scratching puzzles in later levels. Trial and error is the key to success here. Luckily, the levels are designed to teach you the game as you play, and the difficulty level increases steadily through all thirty levels.

The developers also included an easy-to-use level creator for you to make your own stages and upload them onto the Juju social networking platform, where players can download other’s levels and rate and comment on them. While only a few user-generated levels were available when we played, we’re sure that if the game is popular enough they’ll soon be spreading like rabbits, leading to a lot of replayability. SCRAPS will be submitted to the App Store any day now, so look for it in the coming weeks.

Connect with us

Latest Recommended Games

The fine folks at Milkbag games have released Sidewords. A fun little diversion of a word game that is the devil child of crosswords and scrabble. For each level in the game the grid must be completed to win the level — this means that each letter at the top and side must be used. And not just the top or side, but each word must be made up of letters from the top and side to create a grid. It’s a pain, but in the right kind of way. Even the simplest of the levels can be a head scratcher until you get used to the game. Well worth the $3 as a diversion while we wait for Milkbag to finally release Snow Siege.

We’d like to thank our sponsor for this week, Zap Zap Kindergarten Math.

It’s not always easy to tear your kids away from their tablets and make them do something edifying. Thankfully, Zap Zap Kindergarten Math relieves you of this task by turning mathematics into a fun touchscreen video game. Win win!

Aimed at children 3-6 years old, the app makes math fun by ‘gamifying’ it, turning simple mathematics problems into little challenges so that your pre-schooler can learn and play at the same time.

There are more than two dozen mini-games, split across three categories: Numbers, Shapes and Measurements, and Add and Subtract. According to the developer the difficulty of these puzzles is adaptive too, so kids of any ability can be both encouraged and challenged.

Mini Dayz has launched and it’s a pixelated 2.5D open world that’s as brutal as the desktop version. In this game, the player is dumped on shore with nothing. They must scavenge around for food, water, and weapons while avoiding attack. It’s the kind of game where the goal is to stay alive as long as possible. But that will never be very long. It’s oddly free and seems to only have an ad on the main screen — for now.

Pewter Games has brought their charming point and click adventure The Little Acre to iOS. It’s an amazingly beautiful animated adventure set in a sort of hybrid magical / alien world. A great all ages adventure and very fun.

We’d like to thank our sponsor for this week, The House of Da Vinci by Blue Brain Games. There’s a reason Leonardo Da Vinci is the only renaissance figure who routinely shows up in video games you know. With his remarkable inventiveness and genius for creative problem-solving, Da Vinci was a gamer through and through. He was just born 500 hundred years too soon. Thankfully, there are studios like Blue Brain Games to bring him to life in videogame form. The House of Da Vinci, which comes to us courtesy of a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign, is a puzzler that seeks to channel the artistry and innovation of its title character.

You play as one of Da Vinci’s more promising apprentices, and you have the challenging task of trying to work out where the hell he’s gone. Was he assassinated by the church? Who knows. Has he quietly gone into a retirement? Perhaps. Did he accidentally invent a shrink ray and shrink himself down to the size of an dustmite? Probably not. Da Vinci’s workshop looks beautiful, thanks to some impressive 3D graphics, and the in-game environment is crammed with all the elaborate machines and crazy inventions you’d expect to find in the workplace of a renaissance genius.(more…)

Poly Bridge is out now on iOS, and it’s good to have it! It’s a great game and many seem to agree that it’s the best bridge builder game available. But the iOS versions, so far, is missing the sandbox mode. I would hope that it’s coming soon in an update. If you are all interested in physics puzzlers, grab this one. (Note: the video is for the PC version, I have yet to see a trailer for the mobile version, the developer Dry Cactus isn’t that great at marketing…)

Advertisement

Apple, the Apple logo, Apple Watch, iPad, iPhone, and Apple TV are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc. Other terms may be trademarks of their respective companies.